Potteritis: Signs to Know When You're Infected
by HeyLookTheSnitch
Summary: James Potter is cured, and Lily Evans has been infected. And, according to the Amare survival guide, once you're infected with the love disease, there is no hope for a safe recovery. Once you're infected, there's no going back. Beware the Potteritis.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **J.K. Rowling kidnapped me and forced me to sign this disclaimer; we were in negotiations for two years, and that is why I have been absent from the fan fiction world for so long.

**Author's Note**: ...Well, this is awkward. For those who know my pen name, you're probably asking yourself: Where the heck have you been for two years? Unfortunately, I don't have any interesting excuses, really. I'm graduating from college this spring, and I have to do a bunch of crap in order to get my teaching credential, and I just haven't been feeling very creative lately because all of my creativity has been going into my teaching. But, alas, I am back, procrastinating my school work in favor of this new story. This idea came into my head this week and wouldn't leave me alone, so I wrote it. Or, began to write it.

Chadna, Lily's friend from 73 Days of Summer (an old story of mine) is in this story, but don't get confused. These stories are not related. In any way. Which I hope will be clear after reading this first chapter. Anyways, I'm having fun writing this story, so I hope you guys have fun reading it!

Enjoy! And thank you for being so patient with me.

* * *

**Chapter 1: The Infection**

(An except from the introduction of the highly witty and popular book _A Hogwarts Girl's Survival Guide to Magical Crushes, Infatuations, and Love Potions_)

_The Disease__: Amare_

_Danger Level__: High (depending on the degree of infection)_

_Causes__: An impossibly handsome idiot who charms his way into the victim's heart with sweet words, kind actions, and a delicious smile._

_History of the Disease__: The matters of the heart are a weak thing, and the heart's tendency to fall for such a man is not new to this century, but can indeed be traced back to the beginning of time, winding it's way from the Garden of Eden (which brought about the downfall of all human kind, mind you, according to Muggle Christian theology), Romeo Montague (who succumbed to the disease in a rather fatal way, taking his so called "beloved" with him), and Argus Filch (although the origins of the Amare have yet to be evidentially proven in this case, but his sullen personality seems to point to a lost love of some sort). _

_Contagion Level__: How exactly this disease spreads is still unknown. One thing is clear, however; it seems to lie dormant in all human beings, until it is activated. Activation occurs when the disease is triggered by a physical attraction from aforementioned male contact. There are seven initial stages—or signs—of the disease known to come on extremely quickly after infection begins. (For full list of the seven signs, see page 5.)_

_OOO_

Sitting at the very edge of the bench, in the last remaining seat possible as if she wished nothing more than to bolt from the room at any given moment, a young girl sat sobbing into her hands. A league of her friends sat around her, and even though they patted her back and muttered comforting words to her in between her hysterical hiccoughs, there seemed to be a look of alarm in each of their eyes, as if they too wanted to make a quick getaway. This look of apprehension was caused by none other than the change in weather; it hadn't snowed, hailed, or sleeted in Scotland for nearly two weeks now, and it seemed inevitable that winter had finally ended. Which meant only one thing:

Spring fever was settling into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"I've never seen anything so pathetic," muttered a seventh year Gryffindor girl as she looked over at the hysterical fourteen year old as if she were the most indecent person she'd ever set her eyes on. "You're fourteen," she continued as if she were talking to the distraught girl herself, "move on with your life."

The gossiping girl swept her long dark hair over her shoulder as she turned to appraise her friend who sat beside her with her head bowed over her homework that was hidden underneath her mass of red hair. The girl nudged the redhead with her elbow, and her friend glanced briefly at the crying girl, before continuing her previous activity of writing in her journal.

"Why are you so interested, Chadna? This is about the third guy she's dated in the past month," Lily Evans exclaimed, waving her quill in the air absently.

Chadna shrugged. "Yeah, well, this time it was Robbie Colton. A seventh year. A _Ravenclaw, _as a matter of fact. Frankly, I thought he would have been smarter than that."

Lily grinned at her friend slyly as she pretended to write in her notebook. "_Chadna Gupta: shows extreme interest in a male known to have sexual relations with underage witches—"_

"Shut up, you tit-face," Chadna announced, grabbing Lily's quill from out of her hands and tossing it underneath the table. "I'm far too independent to catch the _Amare_."

"That was my best quill," Lily replied indignantly as she invisibly toed her way underneath the dining table in the Great Hall, attempting to roll over her quill with her foot. She sighed with a heavy exasperation. "Go get it, Chad."

Chadna pulled a face. "Ugh. Crawl through bits of mash, smashed peas, and who-knows-what-else down there? No, thank you."

"Afraid for dear Robbie to see you with crumbs in your hair?" teased Lily, giving up her lost search for her quill.

"He wants to work in the Department of Mysteries, Lily," she responded as if this settled the matter, "It's not even the mysterious part he's interested in; he wants to do some nonsense like 'manage the records' or some boring arse-work like that."

Lily nodded half-mockingly. "Seem to know a lot about him," she noted, closing her notebook and focusing on her dinner. She smirked to herself as Chadna groaned in apparent frustration of Lily's _Amare _jokes.

It was a game that the two girls had liked to play since third year: Who was going to be the one who fell in love first? Both girls had ran into each other on the Hogwarts Express way back in their first year (although Chadna liked to claim that she couldn't recall ever seeing Lily on the train because she had been obscured by Severus Snape's overall "douche-grease"). But, after a rather quick bonding moment shared when the two of them had run away from some fellow first year Hufflepuff boys who had only wanted to hold their hands to see if love was a contagious disease, Lily and Chadna's friendship had been solidified. Boys were, simply put, a nuisance. If Chadna wanted to become the head of the _Daily Prophet _by the time she was twenty-five, she couldn't possibly allow a serious relationship to slow her down.

And Lily—well, at a boarding school for magic, one could never be sure if an infatuation was due to hormones, real attraction, or a love potion.

In the case of Sirius Black, it was probably a love potion, in which case it was simply safer to just stay out of the whole realm of _Amare _all together_. _

"And what about you?"

"What about me?" asked Lily.

When Chadna didn't answer immediately, Lily turned her gaze to observe her, knowing fully well what her best friend was speaking about. It was, after all, one of the most tedious of their conversations that had been occurring since September of this school year. "Don't say it, Chad."

Chadna speared a roasted potato with her fork and twirled it around innocently. "Say what?"

"You know what."

"Guilty conscience, eh?"

In fact, Lily _was_ suffering from a guilty conscience. Not because the _Amare _had taken full seize of her immune system. No. It wasn't the disease. At least, she was pretty sure she hadn't been infected, but then you never really know, do you? One moment you're fine, happy, enjoying life—the next, you're a sniveling mess like Marcia Benton. Because that's what the disease did to girls like Marcia Benton. Like Lily Evans. Like every girl in the world. And Lily wasn't keen on allowing herself to fall into the _Amare _crutches three months away from graduation. So far, she'd made it through seventh year without any symptoms, which was a rarity in deed, since odds showed the a girl usually became infected, at the minimum, twice a year. But, Lily was safe.

Yet that was probably how Marcia Benton had felt as well.

Lily Evans was guilty simply because she wasn't sure what she should be guilty about. Which was all rather confusing, to be honest.

"Have one of your meetings with James tonight?"

It was only because Lily knew Chadna so well that she could detect the oral quotation marks that her friend had put around the word 'meetings.' In fact, if Lily _did_ catch the _Amare_, it would probably be because of her friend's constant nagging about James Potter and her "super secret, sit by the fire, stare into each other's eyes and wish for the other to simply end the misery by passing along the disease by sharing of saliva" meetings she had with him. Lily simply referred to the meetings as "Head Boy and Girl shit."

But that was a rumor about the _Amare_—once the idea is put into your head, it can literally destroy you, crush your resolve, and have you hooking up with a boy that perhaps you only spoke to once but who happens to have an extremely attractive body, fooling around in some broom cupboard up on the fourth floor.

Not that Lily would know that from experience.

"You will be the death of me," Lily said to Chadna. "But, no, I do not, and I want nothing more than to curl up in my bed and not have to hear you mention one more word about James freaking P—"

"Hey, Lily!"

The voice rang out amongst all others in the hall, lifting up and beyond the pointless chatter, the sobs of the infected, and the laughter of the safe. It was like that voice had just been magically magnified to cease all conversation, but the world was still talking. Why was the world still talking?

Lily scooted closer to Chadna as James Potter stuffed himself into the nonexistent space that hadn't been beside her to begin with.

"As pushy as always," Lily commented as a form of greeting as he swung his bag off of his shoulders and plopped it down underneath his feet. She could feel it propped up against her leg, and she suddenly became hyperaware that one movement of her foot would send his belongings tumbling.

She had a sudden urge to kick it to the side and an urge to not even breath for fear of disturbing his school bag.

"I'm nothing if not consistent," he grinned at her, pulling his plate towards him.

James' black hair was messy—granted, it was normally always messy—but on this particular night, it seemed messier than normal, bits and pieces sticking up in all directions. His robes were disheveled, his tie loose around his neck, and he had undone the top two buttons of his collared shirt. Overall, a somewhat normal appearance for a seventeen-year-old boy who had just finished a day of classes, Quidditch practices, and Head duties.

Normal appearance, maybe, but not normal behavior for James Potter who was usually never late to a meal, and most definitely was never late to a meal without his three best friends by his side.

"Where's your gang of goonies?" Chadna asked, leaning around Lily to address James.

James's bag slipped down Lily's leg a centimeter as he turned his head to look at Chadna. "Evening, Chadna. Lovely to see you, too," James responded, smirking at the dark-skinned girl.

It was somewhat suspicious that James was without his friends, and Lily was just about to open her mouth to tell him so—probably in some rather witty way that would hint at the boys' illegal activities and immaturity—when James turned completely, so that he was straddling the bench and facing Lily. Lily shut her mouth.

His bag completely fell, and Lily heard his belongings clatter as they scattered among the other forgotten items that the floor had swallowed.

"So, Lily," he began, his hazel eyes twinkling behind his glasses, "I was just remembering the time I had a crush on you."

It was like time had frozen. And like time had sped up. Actually, Lily wasn't quite sure where she even fit into the time-space continuum. The world should have been scrutinizing her at this very moment, but it was like every person around her was stuck in his or her own world, save her and James Potter.

And then she was anxious; anxious that he had brought up the _Amare_. Embarrassed because Chadna was sitting right there beside her and would surely take the Mickey out of her later, but, for the life of her, Lily couldn't be sure if Chadna was even in the vicinity and able to hear this discussion. And why the hell would James Potter even say something like that to her anyways?

She was not going to get infected.

_Was not._

Lily allowed a grin to flicker onto her face as she allowed time to regain meaning again. "Crush, Potter?" she asked him in a tone that clearly stated her sarcasm. Because, honestly, who hadn't known that James Potter had had a crush on Lily Evans? The _Amare _had run rabid in him the entire year during O.W.L.s, and for a brief period of time last year.

They had been nothing more than friends this year, _damn it_.

James chuckled easily, as if this pronouncement of his was completely normal and was not some flirty comment meant to prolong embarrassment. "Yes, _Evans_, crush—you know, when a boy likes an attractive girl…"

Had he just called her attractive? No, surely not.

"I do have quite an extensive vocabulary, thanks, James," Lily responded.

He was grinning widely now. "Well, your general confusion just then suggested otherwise."

"What are you on about, Potter?"

In a state of complete ease, James placed his hands behind him on the bench and leaned backwards, observing her with a mocking interest that seemed to set her cheeks on fire. Figuratively, of course, because blushing only really occurred after a person had been infected.

"No worries, Lily," James said then, "I'm safe. The crush has been extinct."

Lily felt her foot connect with one of his discarded textbooks as she kicked out underneath the table. Something exploded in her gut, a large, dark something that seemed to claw at her insides. Angry. She was angry at the tosser for being such an insolent prick, and why did he even think she had to be told of his immunity to the disease anyways? Who did he think he was? Some national spokeswizard for the _Amare _spring fever outbreak?

"Should I alert the Prophet?" she questioned sarcastically.

"I've always wanted to make the headlines," he responded before promptly turning around in his seat and facing his food once again as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

Lily, on the other hand, felt like screaming, like getting right up in his handsome face and shouting every profane word her intellectual brain could come up with. Instead, she rationally spun around to share her exasperation with Chadna, but the girl was too busy laughing into the back of her hand.

And that about set Lily off once again.

What did he _mean,_ that he was safe? He blew up toilets. He made girls trip on absolutely nothing on their way out the classroom doors just by looking at them. Safe? Him? She didn't need him to tell her he was safe. Even if the _Amare _was still raging through his hormones for her, she would still be safe, because Lily Evans would never fall for James Potter. She may not have built up an immunity to the disease, but she for sure had built up thousands of antibodies to her fellow Head Boy.

"Shit," she heard James moan, "who knocked my bag over?"

She took savage pleasure in kicking something that felt like an inkbottle further under the table.

Later that night, after a rather uncomfortable dinner that Lily had finished early by scarfing down her food in under five minutes (which had caused Lily to feel downright disgusting immediately afterwards), Lily paced the girls dormitory as her mind ran in about a million directions.

"Why did he even _think _he had to tell me that now?" Lily hissed as Chadna sat at the foot of her bed with a magazine laid out in front of her.

Mary Macdonald, another seventh year Gryffindor girl who was already happily engaged with the _Amare_, spoke around the toothbrush that was hanging from her mouth. "Didn't you hear? He just asked Felicity to Hogsmeade next weekend," although that was not what her words sounded like at all, because her toothpaste was attempting to gag her at that moment, but Lily still caught the gist of it, and her pacing stopped abruptly.

"Felicity Cassidy? The _Hufflepuff_?" Chadna asked with a wrinkle in her nose that spoke of her distaste for the situation. "You're much better looking, Lily."

Some germy monster purred approvingly in Lily's chest, but the words that came out of her mouth were, "I don't _care _if she's pretty! Did he just have to tell me that to-I dunno-to get rid of his guilt?" A string of not-so-polite words issued from the redhead's mouth as she flopped backwards onto her bed.

"Guilt?" Mary spat against her toothbrush, bits of paste flying out in confusion. Chadna snorted, and Lily's mind continued to rage.

The idea that James Potter had to rid himself of his crush in order to freely date Fee Cassidy frightened poor Lily to the extreme. For if he felt he had to admit something to Lily, perhaps he was also trying to tell her that she needed to back off. After all, he was now dating some _loyal _Hufflepuff. And if he thought that she needed to back off, then that meant that he thought she had a thing for him. But why would he think that? If she had ever wished that being a witch came with the super power to read minds, Lily would have been hoping for that ability more than anything at this moment. It was eating her up inside.

Lily flung herself backwards into her pillows, her eyes shut. James Potter didn't like her anymore. He had been cured. Why had he been cured? Why wasn't she good enough for him anymore? It must have been something she said…or done…or—"

She didn't care. Not one teensy little bit. James could be shagging Felicity in her own dormitory for all she cared, and Lily wouldn't even take a second glance.

Well, maybe she would just to simply tell _dear _Felicity that her blond hair really wasn't all that shiny and that there were probably thirty other girls at Hogwarts who could easily rival her lavender eyes.

And James Potter would just sit there on her cold floor stark naked.

With a rather painful smack to the stomach, something that had been flung across the room with uncanny accuracy that only spoke of Chadna landed on top of Lily. It was Chadna's magazine.

Annoyed, she threw a glance at her friend. "That hurt, you twit."

"Look at page two."

Lily wrenched open the thin magazine to a page that had been dog-eared. It didn't take her long to figure out why Chadna had so nicely thrown this monstrosity at Lily. In bright red nail polish—the same nail polish that Chadna had just been busy painting her toes with—there was one word circled from some article about Wandless's new album.

Love.

With a fearful little gasp, Lily quickly shut the magazine and threw it on the ground as if the pages themselves were germ-ridden. When she got the nerve to look over at her friend's bed, Chadna was smirking. She blew a kiss and drew a misshapen heart in the air with her fingers.

"_Amare_," she tattled in a sing-song voice.

Lily threw her face into her pillow, somehow hoping that it would stop her beating heart. Completely smother her. Set fire to whatever it was inside of her that was causing her to break out in a nervous sweat.

_Amare, Amare, Amare._

Love, Love, Love.

She wanted to crush James Potter. Or maybe-

"It's called a crush, Tits," Chadna reminded her.

And suddenly, Lily felt like crying and throwing something all at once.

Mood swings. A typical sign of the _Amare. _

Merlin, she had become a victim. Somehow, somewhere, sometime along the way of this year and this friendship with James Potter, she had become infected. Because this is how it happened, after all—unexpectedly, out-of-the-blue, just when the diseased boy had affirmed his safety, a false sense of security, a glitch in the immune system that allowed the dormant cupid out.

And now she was a victim to Potteritis.

* * *

**A/N 2: **In which love is a disease (or, at least in Chadna's and Lily's minds)...

And, that whole conversation that James had with Lily-Yep, that definitely happened to me, right down to the whole "Hey, I was just remembering the time I had a crush on you." So, yes, boys really can be that abrasive, random, and downright inconsiderate. And yet, us girls still love them. Amazing, isn't it?

I promise to update soon (probably this weekend? But you are all probably pretty sick and tired of my promises by now, so we'll just let actions speak louder than words this time, shall we?)

Please review! Let me know what you think!

-HeyLookTheSnitch


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I just ate a rather delicious homemade dinner of store-bought chicken nuggets, gold fish, and watermelon. If I owned J.K. Rowling's rights, I think I would have been able to do better than that...**  
**

**A/N: **IT HAS ONLY BEEN ONE WEEK SINCE MY LAST UPDATE! Hurray for me. I'm so happy! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! Thanks to you who read chapter one last week! It means a lot to me! I've realized recently that I am a HUGE perfectionist, thus I always think that everything I have written is utter nonsense, and I always believe that I can make it better. That probably helps explain my terrible updating skills. I just never think what I have written is good enough. Yeah, it's a problem that I'm trying to work on... lol

On that note, I hope you all enjoy this chapter!

Happy reading!

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**Chapter 2: _Amantes sunt amentes_**

_Sign One: Extreme Case of the Eye-Rape_

_As a general rule, an easy way to find out if you've developed the Amare is to monitor your eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul, as the popular saying goes, so your eyes will hold all the answers as to who your infector may be. There is a simple test for this: When you enter a room, find yourself bored in a room, or simply become distracted whilst in a room, where do your eyes go? If they consistently stick to a single man, then you have most likely been infected. (For ways to prevent this phenomenon from revealing your Amare secret, turn to page 10.)_

_OOO_

For the next few days, Lily carried around her secret like a precious chalice. She was infected, she had the _Amare, _and there was certain knowledge to the whole situation that left Lily feeling strangely powerful.

She could do anything. She could bloody fly if she wanted to. Just spread her wings, jump off the Whomping Willow, and straight up soar over the castle like a freaking owl. It was a marvelous feeling. After all, if this disease was going to destroy her—potentially _kill _her—Lily may as well live it up while she still had the chance.

Time for her to start a bucket list. A post-Potteritis-heart-breaking bucket list.

Of course, the _Amare _also caused her to feel rather ill at times (usually when she stumbled into the common room still only half awake to be bombarded by a James Potter sneak-attack good morning message).

Somehow, Lily managed to hide all of these conflicting emotions. After all, it wasn't as if this was her first time. She _had _had boyfriends before; she'd been on dates. None of this was really new. But it had been so long since she had felt this way, that this round of the disease hit her like her body held no immunity to it whatsoever. Or maybe it was because this bout of the _Amare _was so unexpected; James Potter was the last person that Lily had ever expected to like, let alone crush on. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. One morning, she woke up and could look at Potter _without_ wondering what it would be like to hold him against her; the next day, she was absolutely smitten, imagining subtle ways to get closer and closer until her arm might just accidently budge up against his. It was sick, really.

On the plus side, at least she had experienced the _Amare _enough times before that she was still capable of carrying on normal conversation with James.

She was pro at playing it cool; the survival guide had instilled that much into her at least.

But that was made all the more complicated, because he apparently had a new girl in his life who was not Lily. She wasn't even a ginger.

And that made her feel like punching something.

"Have you ever wondered if Filch dated?"

Lily's heart rate spiked as James leaned closer to whisper this into her ear. She had to stop herself from leaning back into him after he pulled away. Sometime during the beginning of seventh year, Lily had started sitting next to James in their classes. It had started off with sharing a table in Potions—after all, he wasn't dreadful at Potions, and it was nice to have a partner that wasn't complete rubbish, especially since that was the one class Chadna and Lily didn't share. She had done it as an experiment—what would she get if she mixed herself, Potter, and a bubbling, often putrid smelling concoction?—but when she learned that she genuinely liked talking with Pighead Potter (as she had so often called him), one day's experiment turned into two, and so on it went. Eventually, Lily had just given up and started sitting with all of the Marauders in every class.

They made things lively. They made her laugh.

James made her happy.

At that thought, Lily began to fear how long this dormant _Amare _had been stirring in her chest.

As Professor Flitwick continued to lecture in the front of the classroom about charms to review for their N.E.W.T.s, Lily glanced over at James, looking at him sideways through the corner of her green eyes. She couldn't look at him properly right now, not ever, if the disease kept up at this rate. In the past twenty-four hours alone, she—or, more accurately, Chadna—had caught her staring at James Potter whenever he was within a fifty-foot radius. There had even been an instance where Lily had found herself looking around for him in the common room when she knew that he was actually in the library looking through books for their Transfiguration essay.

The whole thing was so embarrassing, that Lily no longer trusted her eyes. So, no matter how hilarious or charming Potter may be—even if he was talking about Filch, who had long perplexed Lily and Chadna—Lily could not look at him. He was a disembodied voice.

"What could possibly make you think of _that_ right now?" Lily asked quietly, rolling her eyes and blatantly ignoring how her heart swooped at his grin. _And why aren't you sitting with lovely Felicity right now? _She allowed the shorter layers of her hair to fall into her face, masking her view of James behind a fiery curtain.

Chadna snorted quietly, having heard James's question. "Why do you think he's such a git?" she asked pointedly. "The _Amare _ruined him." At that, Chadna winked at Lily.

Lily kicked her in the shins underneath the cover of the desks.

"What is that? That _Amare _you're always going on about?" Sirius Black asked in an undertone, his feet propped up onto his desk as he leaned backwards in his chair as if he wasn't currently in class. There were two Ravenclaw girls who were staring at Sirius with glassy eyes, obviously not paying any attention whatsoever to the professor. They would probably fail to notice a Dementor, the way they were behaving.

_Amare, sign one._

Lily and Chadna shared a knowing look, both shaking their heads as if only an imbecile didn't know what the _Amare _was, before Lily said, "You call yourself a wizard, and you don't even know a simple Latin word."

"Ah," James breathed, catching Lily's eyes unexpectedly. There was a nice golden twinkle to his hazel orbs that demanded Lily's attention against her will. "_Amantes sunt amentes._"

If she wasn't so aware of James's presence right then and her own blood pounding in her veins, Lily would have been fairly certain that her heart had stopped. Flat out stopped. Exploded into tiny fragments. Latin was not a dead language; it was very much alive.

"Speak English, mate," Sirius drawled, "Those lesser than our caliber are probably weary of your flighty pronouncements."

"Wouldn't mean yourself, would you, Sirius?" James replied, pushing the back of his dark-haired friend's chair so that Sirius's feet slipped off the desk, and he fell forward with a loud bang.

The group all stopped momentarily, looking at their professor innocently, as if they hadn't just disrupted the lesson. Lily waited for Flitwick to start up again until she turned back to James and asked, "So, what does that mean?"

"Thought you were the Latin expert, Evans," he teased back, tapping the side of his glasses as if he were an intellect himself, like Merlin.

Remus Lupin, a sandy-haired boy who was the quieter one out of James's best mates, leaned around Chadna to quote in a very bookish manner, "_Lovers are lunatics_."

Lily laughed out loud, paused, grabbed her quill and poised it over her notes, and then when she realized that Flitwick hadn't noticed or cared, she dropped her pretenses and said to James, "Always the romantic, you are."

Unknowingly, Lily gazed at the boys—or, more accurately, one boy in particular—as the four laughed (Peter Pettigrew had such a high pitched laugh that it was a miracle Flitwick didn't cast a charm to stop the teapot-sounding hiss). But James's laugh was like the rush of a waterfall, Lily thought. And he had a little dimple that came out at the left-hand corner of his mouth that she had never noticed before. As her hand came up to cup her cheek in order to give her head better support for staring at James, Lily realized what was happening. She quickly dropped her hand into her lap and snatched her head to the front of the classroom as if Flitwick had just made knickers appear out of thin air.

Which, in Lily's defense, had happened before—curtsey of James, though, and not Flitwick.

Just then a small piece of balled up paper floated into Lily's lap. With a suspicious glance at Chadna who had just set down her wand, she opened it, making sure to read it underneath her desk so that James couldn't see it. Knowing Chadna, who knew what the paper could read.

_You're eye-raping again._

Lily mentally growled at herself, closing her fist around the note.

The _Amare _handbook did suggest alerting a best friend to the infection, because he or she would be able to keep you from making a fool of yourself, stopping you from alerting the world to your uncleanliness. But, frankly, Lily felt like crumpling up the paper once more and chucking it down Chadna's uniformed shirt. However, the more rational part of her brain that hadn't completely succumbed to the _Amare _yet sighed and thanked Chadna for her persistent friendship.

And, of course, Chadna was perfectly in her rights to stop Lily from making a fool of herself_, the know-it-all Indian princess. _But it was _his_ entire fault, after all. It was his fault for being so bloody annoying, wiggling his way into Lily's everyday thoughts like some really handsome Flobberworm if there ever was such a thing. Infecting her with the disease like a tapeworm.

A Flotapewarm, as she liked to think of it, which was actually really disgusting sounding, and why did she ever think that was funny? If Lily had decided to chance a look at James now—which she wouldn't even if he started dancing the Macarena right then and there—she would have seen him playing a game of magical hangman with Sirius and a bottle of ink that he had bought that caused the little hanged man to actually sway in the gallows.

That was what the _Amare _was doing to her.

_Amantes sunt amentes._

If there had ever been a more intelligent saying that James Potter had ever uttered, Lily couldn't think of it.

It was just so hard not to look, because his warmth was right there beside her, and his hazel eyes were full of glinting golden specks and smoldering autumn foliage. Lovely foliage that reminded Lily of evening sunshine rays, crinkling leaves, and hot rain.

His eyes were like rainforests.

And Lily's were rapists, shameless rapists, as Chadna enjoyed calling them anyway.

In fact, Lily was so caught up in _not _gazing at the boy who had infected her that she completely missed Flitwick's announcement that class had ended for the day. As students began to pack away their books, wands, and notes, Lily sat in her chair with a steady gaze still directed at the front of the room. So intensely was Lily trying to distract herself from being distracted by James that she jumped when Chadna slammed her book onto her desk just as Sirius called out, "Alright, Evans?"

Lily caught Chadna's smirk as her friend helped her pack away her things. "Absolutely spiffy, Black."

James bent down to observe Lily's face. "Sure about that, Lily? You do look a bit peaky." With a grin, he attempted to feel her forehead, but she swatted his arm away. He simply deterred, however, and patted her cheek fondly instead, which did bring on a rather feverish feeling for Lily. "Temperature seems fine," James announced to the group.

"Her cheeks do seem a bit pink," Sirius brought up then.

Affectively having gathered all of her belongings without so much as a stutter in her steps—a miracle considering that her infector was standing there beside her, jesting her, and touching her face—Lily straightened up quite gracefully. "As touched as I am by your sincere altruism—"

"And, our Lily's back, gents," James interrupted her then with a flourish of his arms, and Lily replayed how he had said 'our Lily" as if it were a one-hit wonder.

Shouldn't he be saying "my FeeFiFoFum" or something equally ridiculous?

"Yes, she's a little walking dictionary once more," Chadna tutted, rolling her brown eyes at Lily like the two normally would have done whenever the boys were being particularly loquacious. Which was often. At least Lily could still appreciate that fact.

"Don't you four have something better to do than play doctor?" Lily asked them, her eyes expertly skipping over James as she observed the marauders.

All four of them paused, looking at each other. It was scary, actually, how easily they were all able to get onto the same brain wave. "I think Peter would look quite good as Madam Pomfrey, actually," James started, eyeing Peter, the shortest and roundest of the four, as if he were the most interesting specimen in Care of Magical Creatures.

"Considering he's a boy and all," included Sirius.

"Put a dress on, and he's identical," Remus chimed in.

Peter, looking highly affronted, narrowed his watery eyes. "Thanks, Lily. Look at what you've got them started on. If they try to fit me in a dress—"

"—we'll make sure to take pictures," Sirius finished, draping his arm around his friend. "Can we perchance borrow that flowing one of yours, Chadna?"

"Which one?"

"You know. The one with those purple things that look like circles…"

"Polka-dots?"

"Yeah, the one with those dots," Sirius amended, and the whole conversation was so ridiculously funny because no one was acting as if Sirius Black acquiring after a style of dress was abnormal, that Lily grinned at James over her shoulder as the group exited Charms.

He grinned back, and her eyes felt like singing.

Chadna and Sirius continued discussing which color palette would look best on Peter—much to Peter's dismay—and the conversation must have been getting rather feisty, because their strides got longer and faster. Peter's protests to the whole situation got shriller and shriller as the discussion progressed, but pretty soon there was a rather large gap between everyone else and Lily.

And James.

"You never answered my question, you know," James brought up, matching his walking rhythm to her own.

Lily smiled, suddenly in a rather bright mood. "I think Peter needs blue. It would bring out his eyes."

"Not Peter's cross-dressing," he said flippantly, "Filch."

She threw him a sideways glance. "Because that's such a better image."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you had ever actually seen Peter in a dress."

"And you have?"

His eyes sparkled pleasantly. "No, but I _have _seen the man without pants, and the whole idea is similar, really."

There was a brief, perplexed pause. "In _what_ ways are those similar?"

James waved the matter off as if it were obvious, his hand brushing against Lily's own. Hogwart's hallways were far too narrow. "Both show way too much of his leg."

They were both laughing now in joyous harmony, a vibrato that had a magical quality of its own as it transformed the air into moving, glittering particles, and the sun seemed to be casting a dusty rose haze into the castle; the whole situation was so beautiful to Lily that she shoved James lightly in the shoulder. "You're far too charming, Potter," she commented lightly, without thinking, although perhaps that was what friend-Lily would say to friend-James on a normal occurrence.

She couldn't quite remember their correct friend protocol at the moment. And, frankly, she didn't care. Because she was Lily, and he was James, and together they were Jalily, or something equally as fruity as that.

Oh, dear Merlin, she had just mashed their names.

"Charming, eh?" James questioned.

Lily didn't miss the snarky grin that flashed across his face. "I've heard it through the grapevine," she replied simply.

"Feel free to inflame my ego by giving me names of these admirers," he insisted, jogging to get ahead of her so that he could now walk backwards and keep her in his line of precious-sights at all times.

She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "The knights in armor on the third floor, the talking mirrors on the first, Chadna's delirious cat. So, they're all inanimate objects, you see."

"Except for the cat."

"Yes, but Mora _is _delirious."

"I don't know what worries me most," James began, as he expertly maneuvered himself through the dip in the stone floor that most students tripped on but that James was able to gracefully walk through (while walking backwards, of all things), "the fact that you hear voices from things that cannot speak, or that fact that Chadna's psychotic beast is the only living thing at Hogwarts that finds me charming."

"Definitely the latter."

He tipped an imaginary hat off at her. "I would have to agree, Miss Evans."

As they neared the first set of staircases they would have to go up in order to return to their common room, James gave up his ability to walk without seeing and ended up beside Lily once again. And though _she_ had been facing forward during the entire delightful conversation, Lily now found herself stumbling over her own feet as her eyes kept darting sideways to catch a look at Potter.

For some reason, her vocal chords felt oddly hoarse, as if this conversation had taken a heavy toll on her body. She tried to clear her throat as silently as possible in order to coax it back into shape so that it would hang in there until she reached the safety of her dorm. Or the boredom of her dorm. She wasn't so sure anymore.

And her brain seemed to be hurting as well.

As did her eyes.

When the two made it back to the common room and James headed up to the boys dormitory in order to change into his Quidditch practice gear—in which the captain looked particularly good in, Lily felt like pointing out to anybody and everybody—Chadna suddenly reappeared at Lily's elbow.

"You left me with him," Lily hissed as soon as she could no longer follow James's body with her eyes, "You just bloody left me with him!"

Chadna plopped herself into one of the best armchairs by the fireplace. "You loved it."

It was very hard for Lily to contain her smile. "Did not."

"Did so," Chadna quipped back, "and that's final, Lily."

With a dignified _humph, _Lily threw herself down beside her dark-haired friend.

"You're doing it again," Chadna announced suddenly, which vaguely broke through Lily's reverie about the lovely time she had just spent with James, replaying the conversation in her head, digesting every word, every action, every blink of the eye just in case they revealed some hidded meaning that she had failed to notice during their walk—

"He may be changing behind that door, Lily, dear, but you do not have x-ray vision," Chadna interrupted her friend's thoughts again. It was only when Lily snapped an annoyed look at friend that she realized that she had been staring longingly up the boys' staircase.

"Bullocks," Lily muttered, dropping her mortified face into her hands. "Did anyone see that?" she mumbled, her words a bit muffled as they escaped between the gaps of her fingers.

Chadna just patted her on the back. "Don't worry, it's adorable in a really pathetic way."

Lily seemed to bristle from underneath her friends sympathetic touch. _Pathetic_? She was _not_ pathetic.

Was she?

No, she was a raging lioness during mating season. Powerful, beautiful, and she had just had an f-ing fantastic dialogue with James Potter, and Chadna was sitting here and ruining it without giving her friend any praise on how coolly she had handled the _Amare..._

Yeah, well, Lily could do anything; she was cool. She had played it cool. She had been an icicle—a rather witty icicle, she had thought. She was a mask of mystery, a women of disguise, a girl without fear, hand her a Dementor and she'd throw you a Patronus.

"You just wait until the _Amare _has struck you," Lily prophesized, "You'll be drooling all over the castle, and I'll have to wipe up the goo that follows in your wake."

Chadna laughed, the laugh of the healthy, the carefree. Though she may be healthy of the _Amare_, Chadna didn't have the burning desire inside of her like Lily, the warming secret that seemed to fill her lungs until she thought they would burst. It was strangely wonderful.

And frightening.

And upsetting, because Felicity Cassidy was a bitch.

"Thank you, Lily, for that picturesque image of myself," Chad exclaimed, fanning herself with her hand and batting her long eyelashes mockingly. "Even more of a reason to innocently play around instead of getting hung up over someone."

_Play around too much, and the Amare will punch. _That was a quote from the survival guide. Lily and Chadna had seen enough girls "innocently play around," no strings attached, until—_wham_—it hit them. And then they became glassy eyed eye-rapists, and the boys who had been too afraid to commit were left to wonder why their girls had turned into Egyptian zombies over night.

The most terrifying thing about the disease was that the intense staring was just the first sign. It only got worse and more uncontrollable from there until the three deadliest of words had spilled from your mouth at the most inopportune moments. In fact, Lily remembered Emmeline Vance (a Gryffindor graduate of two years ago) who had become notorious for blurting out "I love you" in the middle of the last Quidditch game of the season as her boyfriend had been knocked off of his broom and had hurtled towards the ground at neck-breaking speed.

Fortunately, Dumbledore had slowed him down, and the boy's concussion had been so bad that he hadn't even remembered his girlfriend's announcement.

Maybe Lily could give FeeFiFoFum a concussion.

There must have been something to see in Lily's face as she had this uncharacteristically violent thought, because Chadna read Lily's mind with ease. "Felicity really isn't _that _great, you know."

Lily crossed her arms. "She's alright," was her half-hearted response, although deep down Lily was currently devising up ways she could use her Head Girl power to bring Felicity to her pale, skinny knees.

"Oh, please," Chadna declared, "if you gave James the time of day he would come flying straight at you."

"I give him the time of day!"

"I'm not speaking about literal time."

Lily glared and continued to unleash her glare until a thought hit her, and it was so wonderfully simple that she couldn't believe it had taken her a full three days to think of it.

James had liked her once before—or, more than once, if anyone was actually interested enough to keep count. If he had liked her before, Lily must have had something that he desired. And unless someone had transfigured her into a haggard old woman without her knowledge, Lily still was in possession of that desirable attribute. She still had it.

All she needed to do was to remind James why she was such a catch.

She was going to give James Potter the time of day.

"So, do you suppose I should go up and tell him that it is currently 5:13?" Lily asked.

"You are such a tit," was Chadna's only reply.

* * *

A/N

: Aaannnddd, that's chapter 2, folks! Please review, tell me what you think. Feel free to give advice, constructive criticism, praise, whatever. I'll try to update with chapter 3 as soon as I can!

Have a GREAT weekend!

-HeyLookTheSnitch


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **A girl can dream...

**Author's Note:** Show some respect, because you're speaking to a newly college graduate! Just don't ask me what I'm going to do next...Anywho, here's the next chapter! Thank you so much for those of you who read, review, or added me to your alerts! You're my inspiration! Also, one of you pointed out that this story reminded you of the book _Delirium, _and I totally didn't realize that until now. But you are so right. I guess that _is _where I got this idea from, so also add a note to Lauren Oliver to my above disclaimer. Thanks!

Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

**Chapter 3: Babbling Prattle**

_Sign Two: A Loose Tongue_

_There will come a time during the course of the disease in which you will find yourself uselessly rambling when in conversation with your infector. This is mostly a side effect of the desperate "cry-for-attention" strand of the _Amare_ (for more information on this, turn to page 17). Your mouth will seem to gain the annoying habit of spouting out anything and everything due to a fear of dull conversation, a fear of awkward silences, or simply as an excuse to be around the man from which the disease originated. Some victims liken it to a strong babbling charm, but, unfortunately, there is no counter-charm for this un-charming quality._

_OOO_

Hidden behind the smallest table in the farthest section of the library where precarious bookshelves (most likely kept upright by magic) created a three-walled barrier, Lily sat hunched over, clutching her wand to her chest. Despite her current choice of scenery, Lily actually despised the library. She could probably count the number of times she had been there to actually study on her right hand. It was just _too _quiet, and Madame Pince was always breathing down students' necks as if her precious books were going to self-combust at any moment. How was anyone supposed to get work done under those circumstances? Lily couldn't, that was for sure, which was why she currently sat with her back against the wall, gripping her wand in her hand as if her life depended on it.

Which it did, because she would not let James win for the umpteenth time. His ego was already big enough as it was.

From her vantage point she could keep tabs on the only means of entrance into her little book-made niche. Her heart beat wildly as she strained her ears for any hints of footsteps, breathing, or muttered incantations. As she crouched there, peering around the leg of the table, she began to strategize her counter-attack. _Petrificus totalus_ was always effective, but she hadn't practiced _Rictusempra_ in a while, and she loved to hear the sound of his laughter as invisible fingers tickled him to death.

If only they were _her _fingers…

A flushed feeling stole up her neck and across her cheeks.

Yes, she wanted to hear James laugh. Her mind made up, she brushed off her pants and made to stand up to resume her search for him when her limbs seemed to mysteriously freeze. She struggled but to no avail; her feet were glued to the floor. Somehow, she had lost control over her motor coordination. For a split second, she became confused—_why in the name of bleeding Merlin is my leg not listening to my brain?—_and she even spent a good minute or so mentally screaming at her muscles to obey her motor signals.

When her hard work was met with nothing, she growled in frustration. Or, she would have growled if her mouth would work.

"Going somewhere, Evans?" taunted a voice in her left ear that caused her spine to erupt into prickly tingles.

Lily cursed to herself.

A small breeze swept through her hair, and suddenly she was in control of her movements once more without any sort of warning. The momentum of it all sent her sprawling. She caught herself on her hands as she fell forward, and once she had regained her balance, she whipped around immediately to where the voice had come from.

Competitively, she stomped her foot on the ground. "James Potter!" she exclaimed, glaring at a spot where she presumed his voice had come from, "You know that—"

And then a stream of unintelligible sounds issued from her mouth, like she was barfing up the alphabet in random order. It was a complete babble of words that made absolutely no logical sense in any language she had ever heard. She opened her mouth again, as if maybe she hadn't quite heard herself correctly the first time, only to be met with the same useless jabber. Horrified with herself, Lily clapped her hands to her mouth.

Neither one of them had used a babbling charm for quite some time.

She pursed her lips as a disembodied wand appeared in front of her, its owner waving it in a tantalizing manner around her lips. "All that time you spent lecturing me, you could have simply hexed me and at least earned yourself a point, Evans." The tip of the wand tapped her lips before it retreated and became invisible once more.

Lily simply glared where it had vanished and waited.

His smirk appeared first, then his messy head of hair, and finally a very flushed James Potter reappeared in front of her with a silvery cloak in his left hand, his wand in his right. And a smirk that could rival Sirius Black's whenever he was able to slip in a pun on his name into casual conversation.

"You cheated!" Lily exclaimed angrily, but because James's spell was still in effect, all that came out was a jumble of nonsensical prattle. Instead, she settled with hand motions: a jab at his cloak, a furious look at him, and then an invisible sword drawn across her neck, mimicking the ordeal that would befall him.

"I'll take that to mean that I won, then," James reported happily, ignoring the animosity, "but I want to hear you admit it yourself."

Lily felt the curse lift from her as he completed the nonverbal spell, and she shoved him in the arm. "I told you that your invisibility cloak was off limits!"

"And I told you that you can't make rules for an unstructured game," he teased her, throwing his cloak around her shoulders so that half of her disappeared.

She bundled the silky material up and threw it back at him. "Prick," she mumbled with less gusto than was normal, because James was being playful with her, and despite her competitive nature that drove her to want to hex him in an unsportsmanship-like way at the moment, Lily couldn't help but notice that he was rather adorable.

He was smiling at her as he pushed his glasses back into place. "If you were half as good at disillusionment charms as you were name-calling, you could probably catch up to me."

"One problem with your logic, Potter."

"And what would that be, Evans?"

"I'm already topping this scoreboard."

They were both grinning at each other now.

"I did win this round though," James amended.

"By cheating," Lily pointed out. "How chivalrous of you. Are you sure you're a Gryffindor?"

James just rolled his eyes as he was used to their banter. "What spell were you planning on using anyways?" he asked instead as he took on the role of oh-so-knowledgeable tutor.

She smirked in a rather vindictive way. "_Rictusempra_."

"You know I hate that one!" he complained automatically as she gave him her best self-righteous look. "Good thing I won."

"You did _not_ win, you complete tosser!"

But despite her angry tones, Lily found herself laughing right along with him. And the sound of it seemed to physically lift her, and he was glowing, and the whole thing was so picturesque that Lily didn't even care that she had just lost—_again_—to James Potter, because he was so beautiful, and there was no way she could possibly focus properly when he was around.

No, he was not beautiful. He was a cheater. He had cheated, cheated rather cleverly, she thought…

Their game didn't have any rules, as James liked to constantly remind her, nor did it have a name. In fact, there wasn't even a time that designated when it started. "With nonverbals, you have to be prepared at any time, anywhere," he had informed her during their first tutoring session. Then he had drawn his wand, "So, prepare yourself, Lily Evans." And that was how it had started.

Now, whenever one of them caught the other in the library, they would come up and start the game by simply saying, "Prepare yourself," and the battle would begin.

Actually, there _was_ one rule that the two agreed to abide by—the rule that deemed the winner: whoever hexed or charmed the other person first won the round. And, of course, the game always took place in the library, where the term "silence is a virtue" was really taken to heart by Madame Pince, thus it forced the two of them to only cast nonverbal spells for fear of disturbing the dusty books and the occasional studious student.

When Lily had first asked for his help with nonverbal spells back in December, she had no way of knowing what she had gotten herself into. When she had first asked for his help, she could never have guessed that she would anxiously await their next library duel with bated breath, stalking around the bookshelves just to fuel her hope that he would pop out of nowhere and challenge her.

That would probably explain why someone who claimed to dislike libraries so much was constantly sitting around in one.

"How about this?" James stated politely. "Next time, you can take the cloak."

Lily crossed her arms. "I have more dignity than that."

James shrugged, tossing the cloak over his shoulder, the silky material glistening against the dark gray of his school sweater. "Then I hope you and your _dignity_," he air-quoted the word, "like being beat in the arse by me and my immorality."

She laughed at that, because she couldn't help but think about what it would be like to have James Potter anywhere near her buttocks. Her gut seemed to tingle with warmth. "You're a tit."

The second those words left her lips, Lily froze.

Oh, Godric.

Potter must have cursed her with that wretched babbling charm again, because the only person she ever called a 'tit' was Chadna, and James wasn't even a girl, and he was currently staring at her with a crooked expression on his lips. There was a ringing in her ears. She could feel the _Amare _lifting its diseased head from within her chest, pressing against her lungs, fighting against the restraint with which Lily had tried to confine it. It was pushing globs of germs up her esophagus, and they took the form of words, and there was nothing she could have done to prevent this.

James's dark eyebrows rose curiously up his forehead. "Did you just—"

_Sign two. _What Lily really wanted to do was slap her mouth shut for fear of what would come out next, but she had to explain why she'd just called him a breast nipple of all things, but how was she possibly going to explain anything with the disease oozing out of every pore in her body? "Chadna and I—we call each other that…"

He quirked his head, his lips quivering, and Lily was hit with a desire to run from the room and to throw herself against his laughing lips all at the same time. Choosing to do a weird combination of the two, she began to ramble. "It really has nothing to do with that particular anatomical part of the female body exactly—"

"Anatomical part of the female body?" James was laughing now.

"Chadna started it!" Lily defended herself. "It wasn't my idea to call someone a 'tit.' It's not even logical, and I have no idea _why_…" She decided to stop talking as she clamped her tongue in a metaphorical bear trap.

James was staring at her, eyes shining, the gold in his hazel eyes glinting pleasantly. Lily's mouth twitched as if trying to open in order to spew out more words. "Well, if I'm a…_tit_," he said the word as if he were trying it out for the first time, "then I'll see you around, Pecs."

Lily allowed her mouth to open then, but only to smile.

A few minutes later, after James had excused himself because he was already late for his Quidditch practice, Lily was meandering her way through the castle, her feet carrying her back to the common room. She was inexplicably happy and justifiably mortified with herself, a cacophony of conflicting emotions that caused Lily to pick up her pace to drive them off. James Potter was too craptastically charming for his own good, and did he even have any idea of the damage he was inflicting on Lily? She wasn't exactly being subtle about it—she had spent a good thirty minutes pretending to study in the library at the table with the best view of the entrance just to make sure blasted Potter would have a clear shot at her the moment he entered to check out the book he had casually mentioned that he needed for their Potions essay.

Could she be anymore obvious? She was giving him the time of day like it was nobody's business!

The Hogsmeade trip was the following day, and with Chadna breathing sinful suggestions into her ear and Potter's unfortunate wit and good looks, Lily had been going out of her way to be around James. She had devised countless ways to corner him, and Lily wasn't even that great at coming up with lies on the spot, so she knew that she was very sick indeed. For instance, she had already trekked up to his dormitory on the pretense of asking for a copy of the Prefect schedule when really she hadn't seen him at dinner and simply wanted to make sure he hadn't come down with a nasty case of the Dragon Pox.

How many times could she use her Head Duties as an excuse before he became suspicious? James Potter was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

And now she had gone so far as calling him a 'tit'—but, no, she couldn't think about that, because it was just too embarrassing, or pathetic, so she pushed that particular thought to the back of her mind and chose to focus on the inexplicably happy part and the inexplicably flirtatious—because they had been flirting, right?—conversation she had just shared with an inexplicably fantastic James Potter.

But what was the point, really? James probably already had darling Felicity to nickname him 'nipple.'

The faster her thoughts ran, the quicker her legs seemed to work, and she rounded the next corner at top speed, nearly crashing full-throttle into an innocent student who yelped in surprise as books clattered to the ground.

"Oh, Lily, you frightened me! "

Innocent her arse…

Tightening the grip on her bag briefly, Lily closed her eyes, rearranged her face into a friendly grin, and focused her gaze onto the blonde girl in front of her. "I did?" Lily asked, appraising her obstacle with a politely curious expression. Felicity was on the ground, picking up the books that she had dropped upon running into Lily.

What was so frightening about that?

"I didn't even hear you," Felicity laughed, straightening up and dumping her school supplies back into her bag.

"And people always tell me that I have the feet of a four hundred pound hippogriff, imagine that," Lily exclaimed with a tight smile. She took a deep breath and tried to get a better hold on her sarcasm.

"I must be preoccupied," Fee responded, straightening the collar of her shirt. She was a good inch taller than Lily when she stood up straight. "I want to get all of my homework done before this weekend."

"What's this weekend?" Lily asked.

Felicity raised her eyebrows in peppy disbelief. "You planned it, didn't you?" she asked as if one possibly couldn't forget such a treat. "It's a Hogsmeade weekend!"

Something seemed to plummet inside of Lily, like her stomach had just dropped out of her butt and onto the cold stone floor of the castle. "Oh, right," she tried to laugh off her forgetfulness, but the sound was rather weak. She turned it into a cough instead.

"Going with anyone, then?" Felicity asked flipping her long hair over her shoulder.

Lily felt like setting fire to that head of hair. "No." And because it only seemed polite, Lily gritted her teeth. "Are you?"

Her blonde curls went flying in all direction as she nodded enthusiastically. "James Potter, actually. I feel as if I'm the last girl to have a go at him." She giggled, and Lily suddenly felt like pushing her. Did she not know James at all? Because Lily was almost positive James had only had a handful of Hogsmeade dates these past few years, not that she'd been keeping tabs on him, and this girl was making him out to be some sort of wizard sex god.

The complete bitch.

"Yeah, I've heard about that," Lily said vaguely, as if the idea had just crossed her mind and was of no significance at all. But it was of so much significance that there should be ballads written about its consequence, lingering notes that struck at the core of their listeners.

Felicity leaned a bit closer. "I was a bit surprised, actually," she said in a gossipy tone. "I thought for sure he would have asked you, but I suppose a bloke can only handle disappointment so many times before he gets bored." She waved off the matter with a flick of her fingers as if it were some bothersome fly that needed a swatting.

Lily just stared.

Bored? James Potter was _bored_? He hadn't even asked her out once this entire year! He hadn't even had a chance to get bored with her denials. And she had always thought that he _liked _her witty refusals; it was a sort of game between the two of them, a harmless game that the two could look back on in future years and laugh about the ridiculousness of the whole thing. Yet all her refusals had done was push him into Felicity's awaiting clutches.

Bored. They had duels in the library, for Merlin's sake. He didn't do that with Felicity; he didn't even do that with Sirius. She'd spent so much time with James Potter these last few days that she had the scent of his cologne attached to her clothes.

And yet he had asked out Felicity.

She glanced at Fee's slight figure briefly—she really wasn't _that _pretty—realizing that if she stayed around much longer, she would begin to say things that would cause her mother to shake her head in disappointment.

Besides, she had to go hand out the time of day.

With an abrupt movement that caused Felicity to jump backwards slightly, Lily started forward with an erratic motion of her arms as she readjusted her bag onto her shoulder. "Nice chatting with you, FeeFiFoFum," Lily announced, ignoring Felicity's disgusted expression at the nickname that Lily hadn't meant to let slip. _Blasted Amare_. "I'll let James know that you send your greetings."

Chadna would appreciate that last line, Lily thought with a grin as she half-ran to the common room.

OOO

"I'm going to go over there."

Chadna glanced in the direction that Lily was looking in and grinned upon seeing the destination. Her white teeth gleamed against her dark skin. "It's just too easy," Chadna stated, "like stealing a wand from a muggle."

Lily cocked her head to the side slightly, looked behind her to check the door, and then turned back towards the table at the far end of the pub. This had been her ritual for the past few minutes, because the table in question was occupied by a rather handsome person who was currently running a hand through his hair distractedly. James was sitting with his back to her, the seat opposite him suspiciously free.

Gloriously free.

Nothing could be more perfect.

"I'm going to do it," Lily said again flexing her fingers and swirling her wrists as if she were gearing up for some delusional boxing match.

"You look hot, tits," Chadna encouraged, "Go for it."

The two girls had been sitting at a booth in the Three Broomsticks for a better part of the past hour. It had been rather uneventful—unless Sirius Black's fruitless attempts at chatting up the bartender could be found interesting—and Lily had just been about to relax her clenched stomach when James had entered the pub, sat down at a table set for two, and had continued to sit there by himself for five entire minutes.

James was practically waiting for her, Lily thought. Wherever Felicity was, it wasn't there, and it wasn't kind to leave him there bored out of his mind after all. Lily gripped her bottle of butterbeer tightly, the cool perspiration sending a jolt through her bones. That empty seat was practically shouting her name. She could do this. She was Lily Evans, powerful seductress and potential home-wrecker.

No. He was fair game. Felicity had foolishly left him up for grabs. Dear Fee should have known better. Perhaps she had fallen into a hole. Or maybe James had run for his life upon realizing how dull Felicity actually could be. Lily wasn't dull; she was a fiery ember.

"Alright," Lily nodded, pushing her bottle away from her, "I'm going in." She stumbled slightly on the leg of her chair as she stood up.

"You might need this," Chadna suggested innocently, shoving the drink back into her friend's hands. "Now, go."

As she made her way through the various people packed into the small pub, Lily couldn't help but look over her shoulder every few feet just to make sure Felicity hadn't just entered. She felt on edge, and she seemed to be walking on the tips of her toes, as if she were ready to take flight at a moment's notice. What was she going to talk about? She couldn't call him 'tit' again, although maybe he had found that endearing.

No, why would any man find that attractive? It was just weird. Alright, she wasn't going to drop names, but she could banter; they always bickered. That was safe. Or was it? What if she just rambled and rambled for days and James ended up drowning himself in his bottle of butterbeer out of sheer boredom?

Now that was just completely illogical. With a deep breath, she forced herself to calm down, and as a Slytherin boy moved out of her path, she abruptly found herself right behind James's chair. The shock of it cause her heart rate to spike dramatically.

Her fingers jumped to her hair, but she quickly forced them back to her side. She was being ridiculous. She counted to ten, inhaled, held the breath in until she felt like she was going to burst open, and then tapped him on the shoulder.

"Prepare yourself," she muttered into his ear as she approached him from behind.

His head snapped backwards in surprise, but his eyes resumed their casual glint as he set his gaze on the girl in front of him. He grinned. "Aw, come on, Lily," he pleaded, "don't make me beat you in front of all of these nice people."

"No cloak to hide behind today, Potter," she responded with a grin as she sat down in the vacant seat opposite him, "I say we'd be pretty evenly matched to whoop each other's arses."

As he looked at her in amusement, she realized that she was gripping her bottle rather tightly. Her foot even jumped when he laughed. "May I be the first one to say that we have quite the dysfunctional relationship," James suggested.

Lily lifted her bottle towards him. "To dysfunctional relationships."

James clinked his bottle up against hers. "Touché, Evans."

They both took a sip of their butterbeer, and Lily used the silence to fish for something to say next. Under normal circumstances, she would never have fretted about conversation with Potter; she would normally just say whatever happened to come across her mind, and he seemed to do the same. It had been a good system, a working system. But it was this blasted _Amare_, the realization that if she said one wrong thing he could dislike her for eternity, that was sending her into a nervous wreck. Words were stronger than wands, as the saying went.

As they set their drinks down in unison, Lily blurted out, "So, I was watching you from over there."

"I thought I recognized your hostile gaze," he joked easily

She couldn't help but remember what Felicity had said about James being bored with her rejections. "I was not being hostile!"

He leaned his back into his chair and crossed his arms, observing her pleasantly. If they were playing their nonverbal duel game, it would be the first time Lily would have applauded him for shutting her vocal chords with a quick _Silencio _charm.

"How _were_ you watching me then?" he asked.

Why had she brought this up? "Don't flatter yourself, Potter," she told him as her thoughts attacked her brain like a thousand angry hornets, "I wasn't _watching, _per se, merely observing my surroundings. Who knows when danger will strike."

"A worthy lesson. Who taught you that?"

She waved off his question with a flash of a grin. "Some guy that I know."

"He sounds like a great catch."

"If he was a cod, maybe," she replied off-handedly.

There was a brief silence, and she realized that they were both leaning towards each across the small table, their elbows resting on the wood; the tiniest movement from either of them sent the rickety table into a swaying motion.

"Did you just call me a fish?" James asked in bewilderment.

"It's better than 'tit'," she affirmed.

James had just opened his mouth to respond when someone interrupted him. "Sorry about that, James. You would not _believe_ the line at the owl emporium."

Both Lily and James jumped, their heads nearly colliding into each other.

"Oh, Felicity," James greeted, and Lily could have sworn that judging by the sheepish look on his face, he had completely forgotten that he was out on a date with a girl that was not Lily. "No worries; Lily kept me company."

At that declaration, Lily's legs slipped from the crossed position she had had them in, causing her knee to bang into the table quite painfully. Her bottle would have spilled all over Felicity's shoes if James hadn't caught it as it tottered. A shame, really. Felicity was looking at Lily now, her light lavender eyes calculating as they swept over the tiny table and the limited space. "Well, how nice of Lily, then," she stated simply.

There was an awkward five seconds of silence as the three all looked at anything but each other—well, Lily at least knew that she was not going to move her eyesight away from a rather fascinating bit of wall right behind James's left shoulder—before Felicity finally said, "Should I pull an extra chair up?"

Taking that as her cue, Lily jumped to her feet, grabbing her bottle at the last second. "I was just leaving," she announced, even though she hadn't been planning on leaving; in fact, she would have stayed there forever as long as Madame Rosmerta had allowed it. "Have fun," she half-choked out against the mysterious snitch in her throat. Unable to help herself, she glanced briefly back at James as Felicity took over Lily's chair, and Lily could have sworn she saw James wink at her. A flash of hazel.

"Catch you later, Pecs."

She had to turn away to hide her blush, and yet she wanted to kill James Potter for saying that to her. He was playing with her emotions, and it was not fair! And what the hell had that entire conversation been about anyways? Fish? Boobs? She wasn't sure, but if this loose tongue of hers continued, she would talk herself into Azkaban, she was sure of it. Then Felicity would have James all to herself, and Lily would be shacking up with a Dementor or a prison inmate.

Lily stalked back over to the table that she had been sitting in before, and she threw herself down beside Chadna with vindictive fury. Steam should have been bellowing from her ears. She cursed to herself when, through the red haze clouding her judgment, she was able to recognize the forms of Remus, Sirius, and Peter all sitting on the opposite side of the table.

Of all the rotten luck…

"What's got your wand in a knot, Lily?" Remus asked, and for some reason the concern in his voice reminded Lily of James—oh, how she wished James would care about her—and Lily felt her head pounding against her skull. She felt like crying, or throwing something, or laughing hysterically. All of those seemed to be an adequate reaction to the pain ripping through her chest.

_Amare's _mood swings were tearing her apart.

And suddenly, it was as if she were no longer Lily Evans, Head Girl, graduating seventh year Gryffindor, a level-headed girl who was always able to deal with James Potter. She was someone else entirely, and maybe that was a good thing. It was a reckless feeling that was pulsing through her veins now. Without thinking about what she was doing, she snatched the bottle of firewhiskey right out of Sirius's hand and took a swig that set her throat on fire.

She snorted when she remembered that just earlier she had called herself a flaming ember. Well, now it at least seemed to be true.

"What the hell, Evans?" Sirius exclaimed, his elegant eyebrows raised, as he tried to reclaim his drink.

"Shove off, Black," Lily replied. Chadna just patted her friend's arm and wiped up the whiskey that had sloshed over the top of the bottle as the woman-scorned took another sip of the burning alcoholic beverage.

Remus looked around the table shortly. "I'll just buy another one, then."

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**A/N:** That's a wrap. I liked writing this chapter; it was a lot of fun. The next chapter should be great too. And you shouldn't have to wait long for it. So, please review, let me know what you think. Feel free to give me suggestions! Thanks for reading!

-HeyLookTheSnitch


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I have no other creative, witty ways to say that Harry Potter does not belong with me. I'm sure J.K. Rowling could come up with a few however...

**Author's Note:** Thanks for reading, reviewing, adding this story to your alerts! I love reading your reviews, so thank you for taking the time to leave them! So, here's the next chapter. I hope you all enjoy it!

* * *

**Chapter 4: A Burning Phoenix**

_Sign Three: Multiple Personality Transfigurations_

_An odd phenomenon takes place when you begin to become infatuated with another person. The _Amare _will continue it's feverish burn through your bodily system, and by doing so it will begin to transfigure your persona. Your likes, dislikes, and otherwise rational personality will take on a new form all together. Some medical experts say that this is due to the body's reflex trained to rid itself of the disease, becoming someone else to forget about the _Amare _and its effects. Unfortunately, this personality transfiguration only makes the _Amare _more potent. Important note: stay away from alcoholic beverages, for this will only make the side effects worse. You may become uncharacteristically touchy, handsy, and overall more forth-coming._

_OOO_

There were a few things that the population of Hogwarts knew about their Head Girl. The first and most simple fact was that she was Muggle-born. The second was that her blood status really proved nothing, because she could easily send any one of the Hogwarts' students onto their backs with a flick of her wand—a fact that the Slytherin's would only admit most begrudgingly in the sacred corners of their private thoughts. The third was that Lily Evans would never send any one of the students crumpling to the floor because she was so _good_. She was the type of girl that students looked at and muttered, "Has she ever done anything _bad?_" Severus had often told her that there was some light inside of her that he seemed to lack; that this light created an incorruptible barrier around her soul.

She had always hated how Severus would say things like that, as if he were beyond saving.

What the students of Hogwarts _didn't _know, however, was that she _was_ capable of doing bad things. The summer after fifth year, after a particularly nasty fight with Petunia, she had accidentally blasted her family's front door right off of its hinges as she had thrown it open to escape the stifling house. She had even received a warning from the ministry about the use of underage sorcery. Technically, she was kind of like a fugitive. Sixth year Christmas break, after she had seen Sev hanging out with Mulciber in the same park that the two of them had spent hours lounging around in together, she had snapped; she had strode up to the pair of them, and before either one of them had even saw her approaching, she had smacked Mulciber across the face.

She actually wasn't quite sure how she had gotten out of that one unscathed.

The truth was there were moments when Lily just couldn't stand to be herself anymore. As if her skin was a prison cell and she wanted to break free from it. Push it to its limits until it couldn't hold her wrath in any longer. There were just times when being someone else seemed like the better option, because Lily hated being sentimental or overly emotional, and if she could only escape it, then things would be better.

So, drinking herself to the bottom of a firewhiskey bottle seemed to be a good solution to the hurt that was flaring through her as she watched Felicity and James enjoy themselves at the same table that she had graced earlier.

Lily could clearly remember everything…up until the exact point when James had left the pub with Felicity on his arm; everything after that became a blurred vision as she downed the remaining liquid in Sirius's bottle. It left a burning sensation that trailed from her tongue, down her esophagus, into her stomach that made her feel as if she were a Phoenix catching fire with the hope of becoming something new. Vaguely, she recalled Sirius pushing another firewhiskey at her from across the table, and because her hand-eye coordination was a little shaky, Chadna grabbed it for her; Remus opened it. And Peter sat there mouthing off some ridiculous jokes about dragons and bartenders, and they made absolutely no sense to Lily, but she laughed anyways.

Because this motley crew was like her new best friend.

In fact, by the time Chadna pried away the second bottle from her when she still had a good quarter of it left, Lily didn't even remember why she was drinking in the first place. Lily wasn't a drinker—in fact, half-a-pint usually made her vision go fuzzy behind her eyes—but she felt so _happy_. Light even. Like she didn't have a care in the world, and Sirius's black hair seemed to be glowing, like really glowing, like thousands of diamonds were embedded into his scalp.

It was a glorious sight, really.

"I told you," Chadna was saying, berating Sirius as the group finally left the pub after three hours of trying to convince Lily to leave, "butterbeer _cannot_ be used as an effective sobriety-fixer. Just look at her!" Chadna waved her hand at Lily sporadically who waved back as she stumbled over the threshold of the door and into the fresh March air. Spring was such a fantastic season, the best of them all, and Lily was in love with the way the sunset turned the sky into tints of blood-orange and pinks and midnight-blues.

Despite the cool temperature, she felt comfortably warm.

"It works for me," Sirius replied with a shrug of his broad shoulders, tossing his empty butterbeer bottle into a waste bin.

Remus chuckled, a low throaty sound that reminded Lily of approaching rainfall. "No, it doesn't, Padfoot."

"You told me last month that it was a great idea!"

"It _was_ a great idea," Lily decided to add into the conversation, though no one so much as looked at her.

"You were drunk!" Remus rolled his eyes. "You can't reason with drunk people."

As if to prove Sirius' point, Lily shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it behind her carelessly.

Sirius bent to pick it up. "Neither can you reason with your furry little problem, but we don't feed it butterbeer to sort out the kinks," Sirius shot back with a sweep of his silky dark hair as he threw Lily's clothing over his arm.

"You still own that psychotic rabbit?" Chadna asked, her hand on Lily's shoulder protectively.

"Remus doesn't have a bunny," Lily pointed out quite reasonably, but before she could continue with the fact that the Marauders were actually referring to Remus's lycanthropy—although her current state-of-mind couldn't quite form itself around that ridiculous sounding word—Peter interrupted, pushing her to the side so that she stumbled into Sirius' side.

"Like you're one to talk," he said in that squeaky voice of his, "your cat is mental."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure Mora has chased Wormtail, here, around the castle countless of times," Sirius added with a sly smirk flickering onto his face as he took Lily by the elbow. "Now, come on, Red. Let's get you back to the castle in one piece so that James doesn't kill us for losing his fellow Head Girl."

Lily gasped as the sound of his name cut through her like a thousand Cruciatus curses, but she couldn't quite remember why...

The reassuring touch of Chadna on her other arm, however, soothed her writhing bones. "She's _my _best friend. Hand her over," she declared, grabbing Lily from Sirius as if she were nothing more than the pet chinchilla that Lily had always wanted as a child.

Lily felt like pointing that out. "I am a human."

Chadna just smoothed down her friend's hair, glaring at the boys around her as if it were their fault Lily was currently a tipsy mess. "Of course you are."

By the time they made it back to the castle, most of the fire had burned from Lily's system, which left her feeling oddly droopy. Everything about her seemed to be operating much slower than was normal. When they reached the Fat Lady's portrait, Lily was leaning against Chadna heavily, her head on her friend's slim shoulder as she giggled over the simple fact that she had just been drinking with James Potter's best friends. And her best friend. The whole situation seemed laced with an irony that she couldn't quite place but that she found as hilarious as a two-eyed Cyclops.

Despite her loss of energy, a jolt went through Lily that set her spine straight with a snap as her gaze zeroed in on a messy haired boy sitting by the fireplace. Everything became clear in that moment, and it was just him. And her. _Jalily_. The common room was such a lovely place. She pushed herself away from Chadna with rejuvenated strength; her fingertips were tingling, and her blood seemed to be singing with a new type of flame.

The _Amare _was back.

A thousand things to say flitted through her brain, some witty, some snarky, some just plain embarrassing, but what came out was: "Potter." She nudged Remus, who was closest to her, and missed his forearm by inches. "Hey, it's James," she exclaimed as if it were the most surprising thing in the world. "Potter," she said again, because one greeting just wasn't enough; it would never be enough. His name tickled her breath, and she suddenly wanted him to feel it to.

James turned towards the group, his lovely hazel eyes surveying the scene as they flickered from his friends, to Lily who was staring at him with her head turned towards the side, and Chadna who had her head in her hand. "Slow down, Lily," he said lightly, "You're going to give me an identity complex if you carry on like that."

Lily took a small step forward, tripped slightly on the upturned corner of the carpet, and said in a rather playful tone that made Remus' eyebrows raise, "What would you _like_ me to call you then?"

His snarky grin made Lily's stomach flip, or maybe that was the digesting alcohol. "Well, I've been called Most Handsome Wizard Alive, on occasion."

"On what occasion?" Sirius had stepped forward, throwing Lily's jacket onto the couch James was occupying. "National I'm An Idiot day?"

"That must be everyday, then," James concluded with a clap of his hands. He eyed Lily who was standing perfectly still, her eyes on him, hands clasped in front of her; yet there was a slight swaying to her body that made her feel as if she were about to topple over at a moment's notice. "So, how was your day?" he asked the group, and Lily heard the curiosity there.

Yet something about the question made Lily feel like growling like Chadna's evil feline. Instead, she found herself smiling easily. "It was rather silly," she remarked.

"Silly?" James's lips quirked at the corners.

From behind Lily's back, Sirius was making a hand motion as if he were chugging a mug of beer and then pointing at the back of the inhibited redhead's head. James looked from Sirius to Lily—every time his gaze landed on her, she felt like jumping onto the couch right beside him so that she could feel the warmth of his skin up against hers—and she made to take another step towards him when Chadna appeared in her way.

"Maybe we should go upstairs, Lily," she suggested lightly.

"No."

Everyone turned to stare at her as if she had just shouted. And maybe she had. Her ears felt clogged. Lily looked at Chadna. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she was looking at her friend, but all she could really see was James's stupid grin, and she wasn't quite sure why, but she knew that she couldn't leave him now. Her thoughts were jumbled, but she was being reasonable; they were friends. James was her friend. She wanted to talk to her friend. "I want to stay here," she carried on, grasping Chadna's hand. "Please. I'm okay."

Just by the fact that she had had to clarify her well-being, Chadna's eyes narrowed worriedly, but Lily had already let go of her friend's hand. Chadna sighed dramatically. "This will be on your head, Evans," she called out as Lily waltzed over to the fireplace. She fixed her steely gaze on James. "Don't let her do anything stupid."

Both James and Lily replied with, "I won't."

Their synchronicity seemed to be the final straw for Chadna who grabbed Sirius and Remus by the sleeves of their jackets, knowing Peter would follow. "Come on, you three. You can finally show me that collection of snapping gobstones that you've been mentioning incessantly."

Sirius made a victorious noise as the group walked towards the boys' staircase. "They may bite. Pete's got the scar to prove it."

As their voices grew fainter, Lily leaned up against the back of the couch. "Mind if I join you?" she asked.

His smile was infectious. "Be my guest." With a dismissive motion that showed his high-priority for academia, James swiped the books and essay he'd been working on off the couch and onto the floor.

Lily plopped herself among the cushions. It was very difficult to restrain herself from closing in the meager gap she'd left between them. She clasped her hands firmly in her lap and looked at him through her slightly glazed over eyes. "I would just like to put a disclaimer on this conversation," she began rather rationally. "Whatever may come out of my mouth in these next few minutes, just blame it on the _Amare_."

"_Amare?_" he questioned, and there was an undercurrent of amusement there that caused Lily's clasped fingers to twitch. "Are you trying to tell me that you love me?"

It was like she heard what he was saying, but the horror and humiliation didn't quite register. In fact, she just felt incredibly giddy. "Quit putting words in my mouth; they taste like strawberries."

James snorted. "What drinks did Sirius give you, Pecs?"

Lily wrinkled her nose. "Don't call me that; it's too adorable."

"Adorable?" he questioned. "Let me guess; that's the _Amare _talking?"

Unable to stop herself because his grin was just too addicting, Lily tapped his shoulder with her fingers like drumsticks. "You're a quick learner, Potter. Not at all as daft as I originally thought." She resettled herself deeper into the couch, snuggling up to it, and now she was close enough to feel the heat from his arm against her side. She smiled to herself. "Tell me three things about yourself, Most Arrogant Wizard Alive," she said, throwing him a sideways look.

"I believe the term was 'handsome,'" James corrected.

She rested her head on the back of the red sofa and turned to the side, so that from behind it would look like she was lying on Potter's shoulder. "I'm getting sleepy, Potter, and all I want is for you to tell me three things about yourself. Do it."

"I hate fish; absolutely despise the taste of it," he began automatically, as if he had had these three things listed out for years, "the scaly skin that sticks to the bottom of a plate grosses me out."

"You can crush beetle eyes with a mallet, but you can't eat a piece of salmon?"

"It's a problem, I know."

She laughed quietly in the back of her throat. "Number two, Potter."

James grinned, patting her knee reassuringly. Her kneecap burned. "Alright, alright," he appeased, "Though I love your name—_obviously_—the smell of your flower's namesake causes my nose to itch and throat to close up."

"How did you figure that out?" she asked curiously, poking his hand that was resting in the slim space between them, because his thin fingers suddenly reminded her of flower stems.

"Third year, I wanted to send you lilies, but I went into an epileptic shock the moment I picked them up in the store at Hogsmeade."

"Cliché, Potter."

"I was quite besotted."

Besotted; what a fantastic word. Lily sat up and looked at him, her hand frozen over his. "Was?" she asked. His innocent use of the past tense caused her stomach to clench like the leftover firewhiskey had grown a fist and was grabbing her intestines.

"Again, I must ask, how many drinks did Sirius give you?"

She was unexpectedly annoyed now, irritated at Felicity Cassidy of all people, because she just had a feeling that this was all her fault. "Two. And a butterbeer. Maybe two beerbutters—butterbeers. Just give me your third fact, Potter."

He snickered before continuing. "I think you're really amusing," he said lightly.

She sighed resignedly, appropriating her slouched position. "Because I'm a bit tipsy at the moment?"

He shook his head, positively grinning now. "No. Well, yes," he amended. "But I think you're always fun to be around."

His words caused her heart to pound as she looked at his face. It was unfair to all women how attractive he was. His black hair fell against the slight olive tone in his complexion in a disorganized mass of waves as if he knew darn well how handsome he actually was. The color palette reminded her of shady places in the sunshine, and she wanted to—she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do. Crawl up underneath his shade and lay there forever?

Her toes and fingers tingled as she continued to watch him. The _Amare, _disguised as stale alcohol at the moment, ran rabid through her blood, causing her hand to move without her knowledge. Somewhere, in the slowly sobering part of her mind, she watched as her hand came up in front of her eyes and then attached itself underneath James's chin. Her spine seemed to vibrate at the feel of the soft, slightly scratchy, feel of his skin and the prickle leftover from his last shave. It was a manly texture.

"Lily," he said carefully, and it was as if she was someone whose actions couldn't quite be pinned down, "that's my face." His eyes twinkled slightly as he allowed her to maneuver his face.

"Glad to know your brain still works." She turned his face this way and that, observing its surface expertly. Merlin, he was so perfect; she wanted to slap him.

"I'm going to blame this on the _Amare_," he laughed, although there was a breathy quality to it that made Lily believe that he was suddenly nervous.

And she loved that she was making him nervous.

She placed her other hand on his cheek. It was warm like freshly baked cookies in the late afternoon. "I'm trying to look for flaws," she explained fuzzily.

"…On my face?" he inquired, watching her in a cautious manner, and his fingers seemed to be shaking slightly as they reached up to grasp her fingers. Heat erupted down her arm, and she held her breath.

He pried her hand away, but still held onto it. "Lily, I think you're endearingly…_" _he struggled to find the correct word, a slight smirk lighting up his features, "_loose _right now, and I—"

"I found one," she interrupted him, trailing her fingertips along his jawline to a point just below his earlobe. "There's a scar here." She felt the pressure on her hand that was clasped in between James' tighten as she traced the blemish with her fingernail. "Not as perfect as you seem, James."

She expected his normal wit, his intelligent retorts that left her feeling unhinged but on her toes, that made her feel exhilarated to carry on the fight, and he didn't disappoint her, even though he was flushed and breathing heavily in her face, because they were much too close. But not close enough. Never close enough. "The one sign of my earthly humanity that reveals I'm _not_ too good to be true."

"Shut up," she snorted, shoving his head away from her softly, teasingly.

"Damn, I wish I had a camera to document this moment," James said abruptly.

"Why?" It was becoming hard for her to concentrate as she stared at their clasped hands in his lap. For some reason, she felt like this was wrong—well, Merlin, no, it felt so right, but wrong all the same. She felt all over the place, like her mind was all over the common room, hopping between couches, leaping across armchairs.

His eyes seemed to be laughing, and they brought her straight back to the couch they were both sitting in. "So tomorrow, when you're blaming me, I would have some physical proof that I, for once, was the innocent bystander."

And suddenly she remembered what felt wrong about this, why she shouldn't be touching his face or liking the sweaty feeling of his hand. Because he was _not _available. With sharper force than she had intended, she snatched her hand back from James' lap. "Why don't you find me attractive anymore?" she snapped at him.

The laughter in his eyes petered out as they stared at each other, sizing each other up like they always did. Lily's chest was heaving painfully as her breaths became harder to handle; she knew the effects of the firewhiskey were wearing off, because she now felt like running up the stairs and never looking back. She felt like smothering her face into a pillow and crying her eyes out.

She felt like grabbing James Potter and snogging him senseless before she would no longer have the alcohol to blame it on.

"_What_?" James stuttered out.

"Lily!" Chadna's voice rang out across the common room as she hurried over to her crazed friend. "Time to go, darling," she exclaimed, grabbing Lily's arm and hoisting her to her now-steadier feet.

"Wait," James declared, jumping to his feet as well and making a grab for Lily's other hand.

Chadna just glared at him. "I told you not to do anything stupid!"

"Technically, you told me not to let _her _do anything stupid, which was a tall order seeing as she's completely smashed."

She was drunk. Was she drunk? It was hard to tell. What she did know was that she was suddenly furious with Potter. And why were they talking about her as if she were no longer standing there? Well, maybe she shouldn't be standing there. With a quick glance at both of them, Lily spun on her heels and tore up the stairs to the girls' dormitory.

By the time Chadna appeared, Lily was already in her bed sobbing her eyes out like she was one of the girls in those romantic films that Lily always made fun of. What had the _Amare _had turned her into? Blasted disease. She looked up at her friend through red, puffy eyes. "You were watching us the entire time, weren't you?" she sniffled.

Chadna sat down at the edge of her bed. "Of course," she shrugged. "The number one rule of friendship."

"Never allow your best friend to get emotionally sloshed?"

"Yeah, well, I failed at the one."

Lily snorted, but her nose was running, so it ended up as a disgusting mess of tears and snot that ran down her chin. Chadna Accio-ed a tissue from the bathroom. "Actually, I was referring to the rule: never allow your friend to embarrass herself while she is emotionally plastered, so I think I managed that one all right," she said lightly as Lily mopped herself up.

"Was that before or after you let me rub my hands all over his face?"

Chadna just grinned as Lily clapped her hands over her own face as she began to recall everything that had just transpired downstairs. Lily moaned behind her veil of embarrassment.

"I hate life," Lily mumbled against her tears and hands.

"Oh, good," Chadna commented, "you're sobering up, because I did _not _want to be the friend who held your hair back as you puked."

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**A/N: **Well, that's that. Let me know what you thought, give me your predictions of what will possibly happen next, or simply drop by and say hi. As for the length of this story, I'm still debating. I'll see where the wind takes me. Please, please, please review! Now, I'm gonna go eat a cookie.

-HeyLookTheSnitch


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